Sunday, May 15, 2011

﻿﻿﻿The phones had version 4.0.7400.0 installed when I received them, so they and my system needed a few things done before I could call home with these nice phones

Configuring DHCP

First I had to prepare my DHCP server for the phones.

I used a Windows 2008 DHCP server and configured Option 42 (NTP Server) in my scope.

Then I copied DHCPUtil.exe from the Lync server (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010) to a folder on the DHCP Server. This little tool greatly simplified the configuration of the DHCP server.

This tool will set DHCP option 120 - UCSipServer and also add a new vendor class called MSUCClient to the DHCP server. The new vendor class will have five suboptions which the tool will populate.

And after this it is possible to test the DHCP configuration with the tool using the -EmulateClient parameter. Only make sure you do this from another computer than the DHCP server itself where it will not work. A good detailed summary of what is needed DHCP-wise can be found here.

User Configuration

Here I would recommend changing the PIN Policy in Lync control panel / Conferencing / PIN Policy to allow a PIN of 4 digits at once. Maybe I am just old-fashioned or unsecure, but to me a PIN is a 4 digit number and nothing else.

Next step would be to get a PIN for a user enabled for Enterprise Voice. To do this use the dial-in conferencing webpage at

https://standard.kressmark.com/dialin/

This does not feel really right, Dial-in conferencing PIN same as telephone PIN but different than Exchange UM PIN. There are still room for improvement in the Lync product it seems... Anyhow, when done the number and PIN can be tested with the following power shell command:

Test-CsPhoneBootstrap

This command will generate a lot of text, but as long as you get "Success" somewhere at the end you are fine.

Now the update will be visible from the Lync Control Panel / Clients / Device Update, and here the update must be approved in order to be applied to any phone.

And I almost forgot to add the A record ucupdates-r2.kressmark.com to my DNS server.

The next thing to figure out was how to reset the phones so that they would forget the old settings they had stored and connect to my system instead. Here it turns out the manufacturing date of the phone is important. On the back of the phones there is a label where you can find the manufacturing date expressed as YYYYMMDD.

One of my phones was from 20100709 and the other one from 20100817 which is a pivotal date it seems.

When resetting the phones there are two different types of reset you can perform a hard reset or a factory reset, with the difference that the factory reset will also downgrade any firmware update that has been done on the phone.

Anyhow,

For phones built before 20100817 the sequence are (cycle power, press and hold while booting...)

Hard reset: “#” “4” “BACK KEY”

Factory reset: “*” “2” “HOME KEY”

For phones built after20100817 the sequence are (cycle power, press and hold while booting...)

Hard reset: “*” “#”

Factory reset: “4” “6”

After the reset, log in and just wait, don't touch the phone, just wait, and waaait, and waiiit. (I like what Mr.Schertz wrote: "In fact, go to lunch.")